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Seriously, if Mastodon would rename 'CW' to 'Subject' or 'Subject/CW', it would alleviate so many hassles and conflicts while helping folks adjust to Mastodon norms.
As an Admin of a Topic Based community instance, in the years since the Twitter takeover, the biggest challenge our moderation team has faced has been to get dudes (yes, it's almost always dudes), to add CWs to certain topics.
Simply calling it 'Subject' would have helped in maybe 50% of conflicts over our asking for CWs.
But in the end, the whole point is to be thoughtful of others, and making it easier for others to sort through their timelines and help them decide what they want to read now and maybe read later, or just filter out.
We are all living through...ummm...a lot. Right now.
We all need to conserve energy and carefully choose how we spend it.
When we use CW's, we help others to manage what they read/see. We help them maintain energy for when they might need it. To maintain hope and resistance.
We also have hashtags, which are integral to Mastodon!
Using hashtags in your posts not only helps folks finds you and your posts, but they also help others filter out topics they want to avoid.
So, do use hashtags in your unlisted/quietpublic posts. So, your followers who love your art, but don't want to see food? Use a hashtag like 'food' so that they can see all of your posts except for your food posts.
I guess the whole point of this thread is to communicate how using built-in tools of Mastodon will help everyone sift through the crapti-fasctist-flood that is intended to overwhelm us all.
Use CWs as 'headlines' or 'subjects'. Use hashtags that will allow us all to limit the flood when we need to rest and rebuild, before coming back again.
@kristinHenry Excellent thread!
A couple of years ago someone explained CW usage as "Content Wrapper" and I've passed it on ever since!
@kristinHenry where do you stand on replies? Sometimes the topic of conversation evolves away from the subject of the CW, and then I remove it from replies that aren't talking about it, but I always feel a bit odd doing that.
@econads that gets more tricky, I guess. If it's on the Local Timeline (public), it seems like keeping the CW is the polite thing to do. I myself have been trying to keep my replies as 'unlisted/quiet public', but sometimes I forget.
@kristinHenry That and an easier way to CW reposts/boosts/whatever they're called now.
But in the end, the whole point is to be thoughtful of others, and making it easier for others to sort through their timelines and help them decide what they want to read now and maybe read later, or just filter out.
Before I found the setting that auto-expanded CWs, the overwhelming majority of posts I saw with content warnings were some variation of 'cat/dog eye contact'. Now, I am perfectly willing to accept that there are some people who are traumatised by a cute animal looking directly at them but, given that, I have no idea what I could possibly post that wouldn't cause trauma or offence to someone.
You can already filter based on hashtags, and hashtags and following are the two ways that you find content, so I'm really unclear how a second way of labelling content helps. Posts that don't include a hashtag are not visible to anyone except your followers (or followers of people who boost it), and it's also easy to mute / block people who post things that you don't want to see. I guess filtering things with no hashtags that are boosts rather than direct follow messages would be quite easy to do (not sure if Mastodon or other ActivityPub consumers implement it today).
@david_chisnall @kristinHenry I'm trying so very hard not to be ableist regarding eye contact in art. I use CW only if the face fills most of the image, but otherwise I reckon the image is small enough in the feed not to cause a jump scare to someone who is repulsed by eye contact.
I do however use CW quite liberally on nudity, body horror, and other subjects people might consider creepy (skulls, insects, snakes, etc.) I'm used to it since we had those content filters for decades on DeviantART.
@kristinHenry But it's not a subject or a headline, it's a content warning. I don't think we should water down terminology to cater to fragile egos.
@dusnm I disagree, it has been used since inception in so many different ways that "content warning" is only a part of what is done with it. But the name carries ideas. If renaming the function to something more general increases usage the end outcome is likely an improvement.
@MartinVuilleme It's precisely because the name carries meaning that I want to preserve it. Men need to free themselves from these crippling constraints. You're not a lesser man for using a content warning.
@dusnm @kristinHenry Often times, from what I've personally seen on Fedi, CWs are used more as headline tags than proper content warnings, at least in part. I feel like a "Tag" box/setting on posts where you can add descriptive short tags like hashtags, which won't make the post show up under those tags however, might be a good middle ground
@kristinHenry I feel like "if only Mastodon had done <small thing>" applies to awfully many sources of community conflict over the years... 
@kristinHenry a big point that would speak for this is that, in the protocol, it is literally called "subject". So calling it "Content warning" makes... not a lot of sense, actually.
@kristinHenry I've muted people because they don't cw their stuff. I admit, I've forgotten to do so in the past. I'm doing my best to remember nowadays to cw. I've had a handful of people straight up remove the cw when replying to me. Very frustrating as that took active effort on their part
@PepperTheVixen @kristinHenry This may actually not be malicious at all -- some clients seem to do this. If I recall, the earlier 'official' one did this sometimes, so some client still may as I see it happen as well but it's super consistent from someone unless they're on web.
Not ruling out that it could be wilful though!
I wish more clients tacked on the "re:" at the beginning because it seems helpful for determining something that's more just a reply, and keeping things cleaner. Don't know how that impacts a screen reader though, buh.
@kristinHenry
Part of the problem is that Eugen personally doesn't like how we use CWs, so he deliberately designs Mastodon to be hostile about them.
@kristinHenry I like them. It's a great spot for the setup of a joke because the reader has to click through for the punchline.
@kristinHenry This has been my talking point for years... Thanks for bringing it up!
@kristinHenry I don't care how it's named, but if you want it used, make it usable!
- make it autocomplete to the most common subjects (removes different spellings)
- let me filter for those (i.e. "don't show me cw: alcohol")
- make them searchable
yes, two of those would make it closer to tags
tags are fine people use tags
see what I mean?
@kristinHenry It's an issue of interface, not just terminology. In the default Mastodon web client, last I checked CWs don't auto-open unless I auto-open *all* CWs, which I don't want. And when not auto-opened, it can be harder to follow a conversation.
For many, there's a difference between subjects they might not want to see and expressions or depictions they might not want to see. In line with my instance's rules, I use filterable hashtags and keywords for the former, & CWs for the latter.
CW/Subject sounds honest and helpful.
Por que no dos/ambos!
Keeping CW and adding subject looks like good, applied transitional ethics.
Gets more people on board to normalize the function -- We can use slippery slopes too, for better quality of life all around (aka, 'good').
